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Learning to CS for non laners

As lonely as it sounds, the time spent alone will make any time you spend with other people more valuable. You can't really learn some of the little nuances of last hitting while you're in game or distracted with other players. It's the same reason baseball player go to the batting cages. Of course, when you're actually in game, the pitcher is going to throw more than one kind of pitch, you have to worry about running after you hit it, and just general pressure will be higher. In the batting cages, however, you can eliminate those stresses and just work on your basic mechanics, so when you're in the high-pressure game-situation, you're worrying about what the pitcher is going to throw next rather than worrying if you're swinging the bat correctly.

But like everyone is saying, it's not all batting cages. As you improve your mechanics, you can try to integrate them into actual gameplay. Queue with some friends to see how well your mechanics hold up when you have the pressure of lane opponents.

As a jungle main myself, I find last hitting to be very difficult early game. When I do lane I prefer mid with someone who has spamable abilities I can use to last hit like kennen or champs that scale so hard missing a few cs wont matter like kass. I also always take butcher to help me last hit during the early game. I am a low lvl gold player and I think my lack of last hitting ability is keeping me from going higher. Also, I refuse to go adc because it doesn't fit my playstyle and I usually end up feeding. I main tanks and initiators because I like to get up close to the enemy. Also dashes are your friend.

..., last hitting with Annie's Q can put you in the right mindset for getting CS. Since the mana cost is refunded if it last hits,...

I started last hitting with Annie, very good introduction imo
eventually you will get a feel for how low the enemies have to be for you to 'one-shot' them with her Q, then you should be able to ease yourself into using auto-attacks to last-hit (I think Caitlyn has a good base AD + dat passive).

(slightly relevant, I started off maining TF, with Ionic Spark (every 4th attack does bonus damage, reworked into Statikk Shiv) and attack speed items into late game AP, he can last hit with his E passive and Blue Pick-a-card, and his auto-attack animation is better than most mages.)

I think a good target cs (for beginners ) would be 3 minions per wave, trying to only miss 1 of every 4 cannon minions

if it's any help, I found energy and cooldown champions can use their abilities to farm without hurting their sustain as much

Some of these posts are super helpful. I should supply some context for my personal interest. I'm a pretty bad laner. As I said in my original post, I main jungle and that's all I play. I have great map awareness and can call ganks pretty well, so I don't need to worry about the other parts of laning but those are still important for others that don't have jungle experience.

I thought it would be useful for us to talk about good things we can try to get better at specific things on SR, in this case CSing! I'll have to try out custom games, that seems like a lonely way to learn to get better. Anyone have some other suggestions?

What my friends and I do to practice lasthitting
get ten friends and do a custom on summoners rift, actually play it like is a real match, and practice last hitting while actually having a real threat (rarely have I been pressured by a bot)
its how my friends and I practice since its the most realistic, but it might be better if your just starting to learn to cs to play with intermediate bots because they actually will do something

What my friends and I do to practice lasthitting
get ten friends and do a custom on summoners rift, actually play it like is a real match, and practice last hitting while actually having a real threat (rarely have I been pressured by a bot)
its how my friends and I practice since its the most realistic, but it might be better if your just starting to learn to cs to play with intermediate bots because they actually will do something

also thanks for that ARAM the other day RiotHavoc it was really fun

Playing vs AI is really bad practice for CSing since everyone just wants to go around murdering the bots all the time... it's pretty disruptive. If you're a full premade it's a bit better, though.

I've tried doing 1v1 first to 100 CS customs with a few friends. It's been pretty effective, and helps you understand match-ups better while you're at it.

He specifically asks how he can keep up in cs from the jungle and everyone gives him lane tips lol

Anyway, you pretty much need to be positioned right. You need to pay attention to when people are getting ready to back so that you can hold lanes and what not. Other than that, your jungle camps shouldnt be up for more than 30-40 seconds

I remember when i first started the game like a lot of people i was pretty bad at csing. Its just one of those thing that needs a ton of practice. I also recall someone saying getting 100 cs a 15 min was "pro status" lol that's what i aimed for every game. Moral of the story is practice makes perfect.

CS is always a tough skill, probably the most pure raw skill in the game. It's not quite as bad as DOTA where you have 2 sets of minions per wave to manage (theirs and yours), but it's still pretty tough.

The obvious is to wait until the minion is low then hit it. I recommend against spamming abilities to get CS because that shoves the lane and opens you to ganks and makes it hard for your own jungle to gank. There are some exceptions like Annie's Q (and actually a lot of AP mids have a decent farm ability), but you get my point I hope; you want to actually last hit an individual minion and not shove the wave too much unless doing so makes their turret get kills while they aren't there.

How low must their minion be? That depends on your attack damage. Attack damage is actually a very useful stat for right-click CS. People say all the time you "shouldn't need any to get CS", but that's only partially true. When harassing, being harassed, or timing your last hit to land between 4+ ranged minions who would kill it, having more attack damage increases the window of time you have to successfully last hit. This is a big argument in favor of flat damage runes (on everything except pure AP types and supports), and also in favor of a Doran's item. Doran's blade in particular is a considerable advantage, and this is also part the reason a lot of ADC get a 2nd one early on. The extended time window allows you to more readily pull things off like "take a pot shot on their hero, mess up their CS timing, but still get your own last hit successfully".

There aren't a lot of tips beyond that; CS isn't a high-strategy endeavor, but rather one of practicing the timing. The real trick is managing it while also putting damage on the opposing champion(s).